Original Zionist Texts and Hebrew School
While the idea of a connection between the Jewish people and the land that is now established as Israel is ancient, the modern political ideology of Zionism was born in the later 19th century. Zionism is "a Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews" (Encyclopedia Britannica 1). This movement was established in 1897 by Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer, who is now famously known as the father of modern political Zionism.
Herzl's writings on Zionism, along with those of various other prominent Zionists at the time, served as the basis for the ideology as a whole as it spread and gained prominence over the last century. Running many of these texts through Voyant Tools allowed me to get a good idea of the most common terms expressed in these original writings.
It is important to note that at the time of most of these texts, the state of Israel had not yet been established, so the authors still referred to the land as Palestine. As a result of this, I used Voyant Tools to find the terms most commonly linked to "Palestine" as opposed to "Israel."
While many of the terms are identical or quite similar to those linked to Israel in the Hebrew School curricula, there are a few key differences, one of which being the fact that "Palestine" is frequently linked to the term "colonization." Along with being one of the most closely linked words to "Palestine," "colonization" is one of the most commonly used terms across the Zionist texts, being the 120th most frequently used word out of over 2,000 terms. This highlights the fact that Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel was defined as a colonial project, and many Zionists at the time freely admitted this.
The commonality of the term "colonization," its link to "Palestine," as well as these quotes from prominent Zionist thinkers, highlights the idea that political Zionism did have a significant colonial component. However, while the data on both the Zionist texts and the Hebrew School curricula show that the terms "Israel" and "Palestine" have links to similar words such as "land," and "Jewish," the word "colonization" does not show up in the links to the term "Israel" in the Hebrew School curricula. In fact, out of over 5,000 words, "colonization" is not included in the terms list at all, and neither are any of its variants (i.e. colonialism, colonize, colonial, etc)."Jewish migration must be transformed from immigration into colonization. This means a territorial solution of the Jewish problem."
-Ber Dov Borochov, "Polai Tziyon- Our Platform"
"Should the Powers declare themselves willing to admit our sovereignty over a neutral piece of land, then the Society will enter into negotiations for the possession of this land. Here two territories come under consideration, Palestine and Argentine. In both countries important experiments in colonization have been made, though on the mistaken principle of a gradual infiltration of Jews. An infiltration is bound to end badly. It continues till the inevitable moment when the native population feels itself threatened, and forces the Government to stop a further influx of Jews. Immigration is consequently futile unless we have the sovereign right to continue such immigration."
-Theodor Herzl, "The Jewish State"
It should be recognized that whether or not the establishment of Israel should be considered colonization is a point of contention in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I do not intend to promote one side of this argument over the other. The data merely shows that colonialism was a prominent idea in the original Zionist texts.
Similarly, in these original texts, the term "Arabs" is frequently linked to "Palestine," and ranks as the 226th most commonly used terms out of over 2,000. It is unsurprising that this term does not appear in the Hebrew School curricula, as it is no longer as commonly used by the international community to describe the people living in Palestine prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. However, the more modern term, "Palestinian," is also not present in the Hebrew School documents.
It is clear that neither "colonization" nor "Palestinian" are included in the Hebrew School documents, despite the fact that they were important aspects of political Zionism in its early stages.
Below is an interactive link to the Voyant Tools corpus I created. Type any term into the box on the left side of the image below the visualization and select it from the dropdown menu to see the links between this term and other terms throughout the original Zionist texts.
